Today we’d like to introduce you to Aimee Heckel.
Aimee, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I decided to be a writer at age five and was too stubborn to have a backup plan. Travel writing. Book editing. Fitness, features and humor columns. These are my specialties.
Travel writing is my focus. I am the head writer and editor of TravelBoulder.com, a division of Go Visit Media. I am also a regular travel contributor for USA Today 10Best and Fodor’s travel books, a luxury spa travel writer and editor for SpaTravelGal.com; and the Colorado Travel Expert (and a content editor) for Tripsavvy (formerly About.com). I have traveled the world to write in-depth series about humanitarian issues in Africa and Haiti, as well as arts and culture in China, Peru, Iceland and Aruba.
I attended college in Germany and am fluent in German. I wrote an award-winning, humorous fashion column and fitness column for the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper in Colorado and was a long-time blogger for HuffPost Weird. I have written on nearly every beat at daily newspapers in Colorado. Health and fitness was a highlight.
I was also known as Digital First Media’s “Modern Lois Lane” for my groundbreaking work in digital journalism. I have been the editor of multiple women’s magazines and edited and contributed to more than 40 books, including many best-sellers and award-winners. I have ghostwritten a handful of novels for reputable authors. If words are involved, so am I.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I am in constant conflict between my desire to travel and explore the world and be a homebody with my family. I am also a competitive powerlifter, and traveling often makes it hard to maintain a regular training regimen and diet. Therefore, I focus most of my energy on traveling in and writing about my home state, which is my favorite place in the world anyway.
We obviously have a soft-spot for hyper-local, independent media and so we’re big fans of Travel Boulder. Please tell our readers more about our publication.
TravelBoulder.com is currently my biggest passion. In 2017, Go Visit Media launched TravelBoulder.com, the most comprehensive digital and print guide to beautiful Boulder, written and photographed exclusively by locals. (I am a Colorado native and have written about Boulder for 20 years.) TravelBoulder offers tons of insider tips and presents the beauty of Boulder in a way that you can’t find anywhere else.
Between the University of Colorado campus, the internationally renowned sports and cultural events, the beauty and adventure of the Flatiron Mountains, and the total quirkiness of the community (truly like nowhere else on Earth), Boulder is pretty darn special, and TravelBoulder wants to honor that. Locals and tourists alike will get a kick out of the site’s happy hour highlights, easy-to-navigate event calendar and stories about hidden gem trails, the coolest shops, the best places for a meditation escape, and so much more.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I’ve earned dozens of national and state writing awards, including being named the top journalism graduate in the nation and one of the top book editors in Colorado. But my proudest accomplishment was when I received then Belknap Service Award from the nonprofit MESA (Moving To End Sexual Assault) for my news coverage of the issue of sexual violence. I am a survivor of domestic violence, and it meant a lot to me personally to be able to help other survivors using my writing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aimeeheckel.com
- Email: aimeeheckel@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/heckela
- Facebook: facebook.com/boulderandbeautiful
- Twitter: twitter.com/aimeemay
Image Credit:
Shannon McTighe Photography
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